Citizen Insane - By Karen Cantwell Page 0,8
the meeting,” she said putting her glass down. “Why do you need reinforcements?”
Roz rubbed her eyes then ran a hand through her hair. “Big yearbook scandal.”
“Scandal?” I asked. “You keep using that word. Just how scandalous can a yearbook be, really?”
“Oh, very scandalous. You don’t know these parents. High strung. Uptight. Type-A. Oh, why me?” She plunked her head down on my table.
“Would you just tell us the sob story, already?”
Roz tilted her head so she could talk, but left it on the table. “Krystle Jennings was the yearbook committee chair.”
“She moved, right?” Peggy asked.
“Disappeared is more like it. Do you have a tissue? I think I’m getting a cold.”
“In the bathroom.”
Roz continued to talk, just more loudly, from my bathroom in between blows of her nose. “One day she and her son were there, the next day they weren’t.”
“Where did they live?” I hollered.
She returned, her nose red and swollen, sat down and took another sip before answering. “A small house over on Pinoak Terrace.”
“Did she sell it?” Peggy asked.
She shook her head. “Didn’t own it. She rented. And I heard that she skipped out on three months rent.” She took another swipe at her nose with the tissue.
“So where’s the PTA scandal?”
“You know the candid pictures? Of the students at The Fall Fair, Science Night, in their classrooms, in the hallways? The kids get the yearbook and start flipping through looking for pictures of themselves having fun with their friends?”
“Yeah. . . .” I wasn’t quite sure where this story was going.
“Not this year. We got the proofs back right after she skipped town. Every single picture in that book, other than class pictures, is of her son.”
Peggy cringed. “Is he that kid with the big ears and . . . how do I put this delicately . . . unruly teeth?”
“That would be him.”
“Every single picture?”
“Every picture.”
“Can’t you send in new pictures?”
“Too late. She made the final deadline approvals all by herself.”
“Can’t the yearbook company do something?”
“Nothing that will get us yearbooks before school is out.”
“Uh, oh.”
“Yeah. Most of these moms join the committee specifically to squirm their way in with the yearbook chair and guarantee their kids pictures in prime spots. They are going to be so pissed. I’m not a violent woman, but I tell you this—if I EVER see Krystle Jennings again, I swear I’ll hurt her. I’ll hurt her very badly.”
Our silent contemplation of Krystle Jennings’ nefarious yearbook sabotage was interrupted by the familiar slamming and thumping that always accompanied my teenage Callie’s after-school entrance. For a gracefully slim and generally quiet girl, she could rouse up a cacophony akin to an elephant stampede.
“Tadaima!”
A Junior at Forest Glen High School, Callie had taken to her beginning Japanese language class with unexpected enthusiasm. While I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of attention she paid to the subject, I did suspect it had more to do with the teacher, Mr. Obayashi, who was a very handsome and charming young man who barely looked twenty himself.
“What does that mean?” I yelled back.
She popped her pretty face into the kitchen doorway. She was a younger, feminine version of Howard to be sure. Hair the color of dark chocolate—thick and wavy. Perfect nose. Intense dark, almost black eyes and flawless skin, even at fifteen. I should have been so lucky at her age.
“It means, I’m home,” Callie translated. “Oh, and Grandma’s here.”
“You said all of that with one word?”
“No. I mean, Grandma IS here. She drove up a second ago.”
Peggy and Roz jumped up from the table and grabbed their purses.
“Gotta run,” Roz said.
“Me too. Things to do,” Peggy said with fear in her eyes.
I looked at my clock again. The elementary school bus wouldn’t arrive for another half hour. “You guys have twenty minutes at least. You’re leaving because of my mother, aren’t you?”
They exchanged glances. Roz spoke. “She scares us. She’s so . . . what’s the word . . .”
“Tall,” Peggy assisted Roz with their excuse.
“Yes,” agreed Roz. “And . . .”
“Forceful.” Peggy slipped her thin sweater on so fast that it bunched up and hung all lopsided.
“Forceful,” nodded Roz. “That’s a good word.”
“Better than pushy and overbearing I guess.” I shrugged.
“We’ll just slip out your back door. Ciao!” Peggy was gone in a flash.
“See you at the bus stop.” Roz zipped out behind her waving.
I gave her a dirty look. She slammed the sliding glass door just as my mother swished in the front.
“Hello? Anyone home?” She hollered out, knowing perfectly well that